I expected this moment, voiced my concern to my therapist, discussed with other like-minded contemporaries this commonplace probability.

I find myself almost one-month removed from my graduation. One month without papers and deadlines and weekly Zoom classes. One month without the assurance of how I must spend every hour of the day six days a week. One month free to do whatever I want whenever I want (within reason).

During the first week, I made a list of all the activities that have been gathering dust in the corner of my mind for the past four years:

• Take day trips – hiking, beach, state parks.
• Get back into a running routine – maybe re-dream running a half marathon someday – or at least get back into 5ks.
• Read – for fun!
• Finish my third manuscript.
• Hire my friend to create audio versions of my first two novels.
• Work on turning my class project into an actual trauma-care curriculum.
• Work on my homeless idea – both of them.

After about a week, feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to even begin, I realized no deadlines meant no rush. I could take my time, focus on one project at a time. I basked in this liminal space for a few days.

But without a deadline, without a set goal or agenda, without anyone caring whether or not I accomplished any of these activities, the BIG LETDOWN commenced.

I understand that this is a common phenomenon with anyone who has devoted this much time and energy and money into a project – given so much of myself into the past four years. The additional stressors of all I endured during COVID both at work and in my personal life added to these new feelings of depression and loneliness – wondering what the point is to anything. Add to the fact that I am single with no children and no Bailey, and those feelings morph even larger.

My therapist warned me that this could happen. A professor friend shared a similar experience after her graduation.

I feared everything I went through during COVID – and Bailey’s death – to come flooding back again. I worried that I had not dealt with it well enough since I always had school to distract me.

It turns out that, despite of all the busy-ness of advanced education, I handled that grief rather well – and healthily (if that is a word?).

This . . . this nothingness . . . emptiness . . . longing . . . loneliness is something I did not see coming.

I listened to Heal the World by Michael Jackson . . . Man in the Mirror . . . We Are the World . . . back to Heal the World.

I thought that was me. I thought I was meant for something more . . . more than what? I cannot be happy with the ordinary . . . yet I long for it . . . to be ordinary . . . to be satisfied with being ordinary.

I am caught in the liminal space in more ways than one. In some ways, I always have been . . . longing to be content with the traditional life . . . marriage, family, 9-5 job, church on Sundays. I have never been content with normal, hence, the longing. But the longing for what? How? Where? . . . When?

This liminal space of the Big Letdown causes my thoughts to swirl into chaos.

One day at work, as I stood waiting for the elevator, too lazy to take the stairs (which I usually do), I contemplated my life . . . at least the past twelve years of it.

Again, I think about that day . . . when I still lived in Nashville . . . was still “happily” married . . . still worked at Belmont University. I remember vividly walking home from work, thinking how nothing in my life turned out the way I had dreamed. Yet, I was happy. I thought, “If life never gets better than this, I’m okay with that.” I loved my job. Loved my husband. I was content.

SOON after that, the bottom fell out from under me. First my marriage. Then my health. Then . . . then . . . then . . .

I felt like every time I got back on my feet, someone came and kicked my feet out from under me, causing me to flip and fall much like Charlie Brown each time Lucy pulled the football.

Each time, I jumped back up, dusted myself off, and kept on going.

By the middle of the pandemic, I grew weary, needing a bit more time to sit in the dirt before picking myself up, dusting myself off, and trudging forward.

Now, post COVID, post-graduation . . . post . . . post . . . post . . . I do feel as if I have closed that chapter of my life, but with the beginning of a new chapter comes age . . . and still getting knocked down.

Only now, I feel like a fighter knocked down but unwilling to give up . . . flat on my back . . . rolling onto my stomach . . . rising onto my hands and knees, grabbing the rope for support as I pull myself up.

Here I am . . . in this liminal space . . . facing the Big Letdown . . .

I am weary.

I am worn.

But I have not given up.

I will not back down.

I am here . . . again . . . taking a deep breath in and out . . . praying for a break . . . bracing for the next punch . . .

I am only 47 but I did the math once and each of the past three years of my life equal 5 “normal” years . . . which means in many ways, I am actually 62 . . . of course I am slower . . . but still I rise.

I will knock out this Big Letdown . . . and I know just how to do it. I need schedules. I need routine. So, I need to treat my personal projects as if someone, somewhere gave me a deadline.

Bringing order out of chaos.

There will be another opponent waiting sometime . . . somewhere . . . but I will take the hit again and rise again . . . and again . . . and again until God counts to ten.

I used to hate when people told me I was strong (I still do). If those people knew how I felt inside, there is no way they would think me strong. Then, I realized that what makes a person strong is how many times they keep getting back up. So, in my own way, I suppose I am one of the strong ones. At least, this is what I tell myself . . . and what I tell some of my patients who feel like I sometimes feel.

“Do you know what the definition of a strong person is?” I ask them. “It is the one who gets back up after getting knocked down. You are strong,” I remind them, “because you got back up.”

Will I ever make the big difference in the world I think I was born to make or am I just fooling myself? Who knows. I may never know. And most of the time, I’m okay with that.

“Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me, and the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make a better place for you and for me” – Michael Jackson

Maybe healing the world is really as simple as I claim it to be:

One person at a time.

One relationship at a time.

Time.

Love.

“I don’t know much but I know I love you.
That may be all I need to know.” – Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville